‘Take him home, Mike’, O’Brien said to Breen. ‘Check the address and be sure he understands we’ll want him again. What do you say now, Mr. Leonard?’
Leonard watched the counterman withdraw. ‘I say he’s crazy.’
‘You mean he’s lying?’
‘I don’t say he’s lying. I say he’s mistaken.’
‘You deny you went to see Simon Rigby?’
‘I do.’
‘Have you anything else to say?’
‘Nothing.’
O’Brien nodded to the stenographer, who went out taking his chair with him. He found his pipe, tamped the tobacco with his thumb and struck a light. When he had the surface burning to his satisfaction he looked back at Leonard.
‘I’ll have to hold you’, he said.
‘On what charge?’
‘The state’s attorney will let you know in the morning when you’re arraigned. You know we have no night court here. We have the right to hold you on an open charge.’
‘All right to make a phone call?’
‘I have no objection to your making one call.’ O’Brien called to some detectives in the outer room. When they appeared he gave them instructions regarding the prisoner.
Murdock stood up after Leonard had gone. O’Brien watched him a moment. ‘Have you got anything to say?’
‘I’ve already said my piece’, he said, and when O’Brien made no reply he walked out of the office and down the stairs. At the hotel he wondered just who Leonard was going to telephone and considered briefly the advisibility of calling Helen Farnsley. When he realized that it would do no good at this hour, that nothing that happened could prevent Leonard from spending the night at police headquarters, he rode upstairs and went to bed.
Murdock slept later than he had intended the next morning and he was just finishing breakfast in his room when Helen Farnsley came to see him. He was still in pyjamas and robe but she seemed not to notice this or hear his apology. She sat on the edge of her chair in her dark dress and plain black coat, her face pale and drawn, her hazel eyes bloodshot and distressed.
‘Murray didn’t do it, Kent’, she said. ‘You’ve got to help him.’
Murdock did not bother to ask who had told her the news; it was enough that she knew what had happened.
‘I will if I can’, he said.
‘Uncle Walter is already at police headquarters and they let me talk to Murray for a few minutes and Uncle Walter told me I was to go home and not to worry.’ She swallowed and her mouth worked silently. ‘Worry!’ she said explosively. ‘I’m almost frantic.’
‘Sure’, Murdock said, ‘but Walter’s right. You can’t do anything at police headquarters, and Murray wouldn’t want you there anyway.… Here’, he said and offered a cigarette.
She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t’, she said. ‘I couldn’t even hold it.’ She broke off and looked right at him. ‘Did you tell the police about that man with the tip for Murray’s column? The one who saw Murray out at the front of the Greene Hotel that first night? I’m sorry’, she said when he shook his head. ‘That’s why I was nasty to you yesterday morning.’
‘Someone else saw him and tipped off the police.’
‘I know now’, she said. ‘And he did go there. He told me later. Even after I phoned him and told him what you’d said about Lee taking over your room Murray wanted to go and have it out with him. Because, you see, Lee called Murray, too, and dared him to come. He walked to the hotel before he could accept the fact that it was a foolish thing to do, and then he saw he was out of cigarettes and went into the newsstand to get some. He went back home right after that. He didn’t see Lee. He swears he didn’t.’
‘All right’, Murdock said. ‘Forget Lee for now. What about last night? You had dinner with Murray and your uncle. Then what?’
The story she told of that dinner was essentially the same as the one Murray Leonard gave to Lieutenant O’Brien the night before. Leonard had been dropped at the Ledger between eight-thirty and eight-forty—to do some work, though this was not a common practice.
‘And if Murray says he got that call from Simon Rigby’, she added, ‘I believe him.’
Murdock turned to face her. ‘Does he say so?’
‘He told me that. He said he’d have to tell the police too because he remembered the elevator man saw him leave the building about five minutes past nine.’
Murdock walked over to the window. He said: ‘Hmm’, and came back. ‘Then he saw Rigby?’
‘Yes, but by then Rigby was dead.’ She stood up suddenly and put her hands on his arms. ‘Please, Kent. You can think of something. You’ve helped the police before in Boston. Murray didn’t do it but the police here think so, and why should they keep on looking for someone when they’re so sure about Murray?’
Murdock had no answer for this. He covered one of her hands with his own, released its grip on his arm. He pulled her coat closer to her throat and gave her a grin that was supposed to indicate a certain confidence which did not even exist inside him.
‘Your uncle was right’, he said, drawing her towards the door. ‘I know it’s tough but you’ll have to wait.’
‘But you will try to help?’
‘Of course I will. I’ve got a couple of thoughts already but I’ve got to have some time to think them out.’ He reached out and opened the door. ‘Be a good girl, now. If Murray’s innocent there’ll be some way to clear him.’
She went then without protest and Murdock jeered at himself for the things he had told her. A couple of ideas? He had only one at the moment and that had nothing to do with a murder solution. The only sure idea he had was that someone had tried to frame him; if Leonard proved to be innocent, he, too, had been framed. Still on the assumption that Leonard was innocent, it became increasingly clear that but for the element of luck or coincidence which had decreed that Leonard should arrive at Rigby’s office first, he, Murdock, would be the one who now reposed in a police headquarters detention room.
This thought remained to nag him as he took his shower and dressed. Each time he examined its many facets the answer seemed always to come out the same, and now there came to him a growing resentment that became intensely personal. That he had become dangerously involved in the death of Lee Farnsley he attributed to bad luck and circumstance. No one had tried deliberately to involve him. The murder of Simon Rigby, however, was something else.
Yesterday afternoon he had been concerned with but one idea—getting out of town and back to Boston. He had asked help from Dorrance and Gates; he had received tentative permission. This was the morning he was to call the state’s attorney for the final word.
He threw the towel in the corner of the tub, his dark eyes unpleasant now and his unconscious smile tight and grim. Well, to hell with that. Boston and the Courier-Herald could wait. Somebody had started to crowd him. And while he could think of nothing at the moment that would be of any use to O’Brien, there was always a chance that he might stumble on something important. In any case he intended to stick around, not because Helen Farnsley had asked him to, but simply because he was sore.
Chapter Twenty-one
WALTER DORRANCE came back to the hotel shortly before noon and Murdock, planted in a chair that commanded both the main entrance and the one from the cocktail lounge, stood up and intercepted him.
‘I’ve been wondering about you’, the lawyer said. ‘Why didn’t you call me last night?’
‘I was too pooped.’
Dorrance glanced around, apparently looking for a place where they could sit down; when he found none he said: ‘Come up to the room. We can have a sandwich or something sent up. I’m hungry.’
He went directly to the telephone once they were in his room and asked what Murdock would like. ‘How about a ham and cheese sandwich?’ he asked when Murdock said he didn’t care. ‘On white or rye?’
‘White—and a beer.’
Dorrance ordered two sandwiches, a beer, and coffee. ‘Dessert?’ he said, and wh
en Murdock shook his head he added: ‘One chocolate ice cream.’
When he hung up he shrugged out of his dark-grey topcoat and put it in the closet. He straightened his grey flannel suit and rubbed his palms, a nervous gesture that seemed to be an outlet for the energy with which he was charged. He wanted to know exactly what happened at Simon Rigby’s office the night before, and he paced back and forth as he listened, his rugged face revealing nothing, his light-blue eyes intent.
‘Simon Rigby was a fool’, he said when he had the story. ‘If I’d known what he was like I’d never have hired him. But I haven’t been in Uniontown in ten years and I didn’t know who to get and a lawyer acquaintance of mine said he was as good as anybody.’
He stopped pacing and leaned his hips against the bureau. He folded his arms and his eyes were still busy.
‘I don’t think there can be any doubt that he tried to blackmail somebody. He must have seen someone here at the hotel the night Farnsley was killed. He said he telephoned your room and someone else answered, right? Well, suppose he came up and saw someone in the hall.’ He took another grip on his elbows. ‘But who? How the hell do we find out now?’
Murdock mumbled some reply, and Dorrance said: ‘Oh, by the way. You’re in the clear on this, in case you didn’t know.’
‘Oh?’
‘Leonard decided he had to do a little talking. I’ve had John Gates up there with him and——’
‘Helen was here this morning’, Murdock said. ‘She told me about the phone call Leonard got.’
‘Yes. Well, Leonard got the call and went down there to Rigby’s office. He says the man was already dead and since you came in a minute or two later and trapped Leonard before he could get out, that clears you—at least that’s what O’Brien is willing to concede at the moment.’
‘Do you think Leonard killed him?’
‘No. You can’t blame the police for thinking so, though. They’ve got a damn good circumstantial case and we have to admit it.’
He went over to the door to admit the waiter, signed the check when the table had been arranged. Murdock pulled his chair up, and between bites of the sandwich he asked how Leonard stood as from now.
‘They’re going to hold him, all right’, Dorrance said. He had tucked his napkin in the front of his vest and he attacked the sandwich the way he did everything else: aggressively and with no wasted effort. ‘Gates is doing what he can and the Ledger crowd is backing Leonard but still——’
‘Has he been arraigned?’
‘Not yet. He may not be to-day.’ He wiped his mouth and said: ‘They’re having a coroner’s huddle this afternoon—you know they still have coroners in this state—and they have a law here that says a man can be held on a coroner’s warrant. That’s what may happen to Leonard; that way his arraignment can be postponed.’
Murdock drank his beer and watched Dorrance polish off the chocolate ice cream. He thought of the afternoon stretching in front of him. He knew that Lieutenant O’Brien might be a hard man to pin down, but he had one small idea in his mind that needed clarification. He did not know how important it was but he knew that only Leonard could verify the assumption. Once verified he had some things he wanted to ask O’Brien; as to what might develop from the answers he could not even guess.
‘I’m going to try to see O’Brien.’
‘Have you got one of those hunches of yours?’
Murdock laughed. ‘No. I wish I did.’
‘Well, now that you’re here you might as well stick with it.’ Dorrance threw down his napkin and stood up. ‘You might get lucky. Leonard needs a break badly; so does Helen. I’m going to spend some time with her this afternoon. The poor kid is half-crazy.’
When Kent Murdock went to Lieutenant O’Brien’s office shortly after two there was no one there and the detectives in the adjoining room did not seem to know when he would be back. He asked if it would be possible to see Murray Leonard and they told him they had no authority to give such permission, so he went out. It was four o’clock when he returned. O’Brien was still among the missing, but this time Murdock took off his hat and coat and said he’d wait.
O’Brien came in about twenty minutes later and when he saw Murdock, he waved the photographer into his office. ‘Sit down’, he said as he got rid of his coat and hat. ‘What’s on your mind?’
‘I understand I’m in the clear.’
‘For now, yes. Murray Leonard decided it would be smarter to do some talking.’
Murdock got a cigarette and offered one to O’Brien, who refused. ‘I guess you’re still holding him.’
‘Hah! I’ll say we are.’ O’Brien took off his glasses and breathed on the lenses before he polished them. ‘On a coroner’s warrant for now. I just came from there.’
‘I guess you’re not too sure he’s guilty.’
‘What makes you think so?’
‘Why don’t you arraign him, then? Charge him with murder.’
O’Brien put his glasses on and smiled.
‘All I do’, he said dryly, ‘is make arrests. From now on it’s in the state attorney’s hand. He’s got John Gates to think of, and the Ledger crowd—you know how it is when one of you newspaper guys gets in a jam—and he’s playing it his way. What did you want to see me about?’
‘I want to ask Murray Leonard one question. Is he still here?’
‘Downstairs. What’s the question?’
‘If I tell you will you have him brought up?’
‘I don’t know.’ O’Brien hesitated, seemed about to add something and then apparently changed his mind. He reached for one of the telephones on his desk, spoke briefly. ‘Don’t ever say we don’t co-operate here’, he said to Murdock when he hung up.
Murray Leonard looked much as he did the night before. His suit which had not been too well pressed in the beginning, looked the same, his tie was neat enough and he’d had a shave. Only his eyes reflected the strain he had been under, and there was an undertone of defeat in the cadence of his voice as he said hello.
‘Thanks for clearing me, Murray’, Murdock said.
Leonard tipped one big hand. ‘There was no point in both of us sleeping here. Have you seen Helen?’
Murdock said he had. He lied convincingly when he said she wasn’t too worried and knew everything would turn out all right. ‘I wanted to ask you one question, Murray’, he said, ‘and the lieutenant here was kind enough to give me the chance.’
‘Shoot.’
‘Answer this one right, will you?’ Murdock said quietly. ‘Did you tip off the cops last night about the murder?’
‘Hell, no!’
Murdock glanced at O’Brien, a silent signal that he had finished. The lieutenant nodded to the man who had brought Leonard and they went away. Finally O’Brien spoke, his tone mildly disgusted.
‘What is that supposed to prove?’
‘It proves someone framed him.’
‘Does it?’
‘Look.’ Murdock leaned forward, forearms resting on his knees. ‘You must have a pretty good timetable of what you think happened, and when.’
‘Sure’, said O’Brien and reached for some papers on his desk.
‘Then let me ask you this. Did those radio cops that answered the telephone tip do so promptly?’
‘Why?’ O’Brien’s smile was gone and his grey eyes were narrow with new interest. ‘Never mind’, he said ‘I’ll answer that one. No, they didn’t get there as soon as they should have.’ He leaned back, his glance straying. ‘It’s funny how things work out in this business. This car you’re talking about was parked about six blocks from Rigby’s office. One man was in getting a bite to eat and the other was in the car where he was supposed to be.’
He paused and said: ‘Just about the time this tip came into headquarters there was a small accident on the corner nearest to that radio car. The officer in the car got out and went over to see if there was any cause for action on his part. There wasn’t. He came back—he’d been gone maybe two m
inutes—and the radio was yelling for action. He got his partner and they raced down to Rigby’s place. Normally they should have made that call in not over two minutes. It took them four or more.’ He looked back at Murdock. ‘What made you wonder about it?’
‘Because you arrived too soon after they did.’
O’Brien thought it over, frowning some. ‘Let’s have a little more on that.’
‘The call came in downstairs’, Murdock said, taking pains with his words. ‘I assume it was given immediately to your dispatcher. He put the order on the air and if the cops had been in the car they’d have been on their way before you got the information. Presumably they were closest to Rigby’s office. Here you’re a mile or more away and it would take some time for you to get downstairs and get into a car. Instead of beating you to the scene by three or four minutes, they beat you by one.’
O’Brien sighed, his glance approving. ‘That’s all right’, he said. ‘That’s the way it happened and you had it figured. And what is it that you think it proves?’
‘It proves Leonard is telling the truth when he says he didn’t call. I sort of think it proves you’ve got the wrong man downstairs.… How do you figure that timetable?’ he added when O’Brien hesitated.
The lieutenant frowned again and consulted his papers. ‘It’s kind of tight’, he said, ‘but here’s how it shapes up. You got a call at 9.05. I checked that walk of yours, from your room to Rigby’s at a good pace and I figure you went into his office at about 9.11. The tip came in here at 9.09 and the radio car should have been there by 9.11 or so.’
‘If your men had been on time’, Murdock said, ‘they would have nailed Leonard and me too.’
‘We don’t know when Leonard was called. He can’t put an exact time on it. All we know is that he got there before you did—maybe a minute before, maybe five minutes.’
Murdock looked right at him; then he grinned. ‘Aren’t you the one who doesn’t like to quibble? What difference does it make when Leonard got there? He was there when I came at 9.11, wasn’t he? If he killed Rigby because Rigby saw him hanging around the Greene Hotel that first night and tried a little blackmail would he have stayed around that office? Even if he had tipped off the cops he’d have to expect them to be there in two or three minutes. Un-unh.’
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